Best nas for media storage.!

kvnwds43 · 31 Jul 2019 at 11:18

Hi there I'm planning to buy either a 3 Bay or 4 Bay nas drive to use in a raid 5 to use with my media storage, i plan to put my collection of dvd and blu ray on it...... I'm planning to use a vero 4k media player to use with my home cinema....... What's the best to use.? I don't really need powerful transcoding capabilities as I'll be playing converted mkv files.?
Thanks for any advice

rhysduck · 31 Jul 2019 at 11:37

What's the budget first off all?
Do you already have data drives to go in the NAS? or does the budget have to include new drives?

QNAP gets my vote - but Synology also get recommended. I paid ~£500 for a 2 Bay QNAP with 2x 4TB drives, but that was back at the beginning of 2017.

kvnwds43 · 31 Jul 2019 at 12:04

I'm looking at getting at least 3 x 10tb hard drives.... I'm prepared to spend up to £500 on a nas but don't want to buy what I won't use if you know what I mean.!

rhysduck · 31 Jul 2019 at 12:24

So nearly £1000 on drives? Jeez.

Are your blurays 4k or 1080p?

Take a look at the QNAP 451 its sub £500. The QNAP 453A is also another option.

kvnwds43 · 31 Jul 2019 at 13:03

rhysduck said:
So nearly £1000 on drives? Jeez.

Are your blurays 4k or 1080p?

Take a look at the QNAP 451 its sub £500. The QNAP 453A is also another option.

I have both dvd & blu rays.!

rhysduck · 31 Jul 2019 at 13:08

Yeah I know that lol

theoneofgod · 1 Aug 2019 at 02:57

What about a refurbished HP SFF system, or something like that, that way you have more control over the software, and hardware. You can pick up something with a i5 3470, 8GB RAM, for £80ish.

kvnwds43 · 1 Aug 2019 at 06:30

theoneofgod said:
What about a refurbished HP SFF system, or something like that, that way you have more control over the software, and hardware. You can pick up something with a i5 3470, 8GB RAM, for £80ish.

That would be good but no where near enough storage.!

theoneofgod · 1 Aug 2019 at 06:34

kvnwds43 said:
That would be good but no where near enough storage.!

It supports 4 drives internally.

Kainz · 1 Aug 2019 at 08:51

I'm also in the same boat as my main 2011 WC PC has some 18TB of data on it and I need to downsize the machine, thus the data has to go elsewhere whilst the existing hds will be used for as a backup.

My main PC ha massive (corsair 880d) and I need to minimise its footprint in order to make space due to family planning etc.

I've been looking at a QNAP TS-673, which is a 6 bay AMD powered beastie. Still deciding on the HD config but I'd be using Raid 5 so I need a min of 3x HD's. This'll give me room for future expansion I figure...

I am told that Plex via Plex Pass doesn't utilise AMD hardware transcoding just yet but shall do in future. I believe this is only for select Intel cpus at the moment.

Phil2008 · 1 Aug 2019 at 22:42

I use my main PC as my media server, I have about 3.5tb of video on a 4tb hdd and I back up every so often using LTO tape.

Avalon · 3 Aug 2019 at 12:40

Kainz said:
I am told that Plex via Plex Pass doesn't utilise AMD hardware transcoding just yet but shall do in future. I believe this is only for select Intel cpus at the moment.

AMD GPU’s and iGPU’s can transcode, but they are really, really inefficient at it compared to intel/Nvidia. Also Raid5 is something you probably don’t want to do, have a look at unraid and a self build, you can use an ITX or MATX case to keep size down, have ongoing support and the ability to grow as your needs change.

Kainz · 3 Aug 2019 at 19:54

Avalon said:
AMD GPU’s and iGPU’s can transcode, but they are really, really inefficient at it compared to intel/Nvidia. Also Raid5 is something you probably don’t want to do, have a look at unraid and a self build, you can use an ITX or MATX case to keep size down, have ongoing support and the ability to grow as your needs change.

I had considered Unraid and going the DIY route but I just haven't the time to faff about with builds at this point in my life tbh, hence downgrading this existing PC as it is otherwise this i7 2600k would have made an ideal starting point for Unraid.

Avalon · 3 Aug 2019 at 20:57

Kainz said:
I had considered Unraid and going the DIY route but I just haven't the time to faff about with builds at this point in my life tbh, hence downgrading this existing PC as it is otherwise this i7 2600k would have made an ideal starting point for Unraid.

Seems like a shame - even if you purchased pre-built server you could do a lot better for the money and literally spend 5 minutes installing the OS.

Cyber-Mav · 5 Aug 2019 at 21:12

microserver

kvnwds43 · 7 Aug 2019 at 07:52

Kainz said:
I'm also in the same boat as my main 2011 WC PC has some 18TB of data on it and I need to downsize the machine, thus the data has to go elsewhere whilst the existing hds will be used for as a backup.

My main PC ha massive (corsair 880d) and I need to minimise its footprint in order to make space due to family planning etc.

I've been looking at a QNAP TS-673, which is a 6 bay AMD powered beastie. Still deciding on the HD config but I'd be using Raid 5 so I need a min of 3x HD's. This'll give me room for future expansion I figure...

I am told that Plex via Plex Pass doesn't utilise AMD hardware transcoding just yet but shall do in future. I believe this is only for select Intel cpus at the moment.

I was thinking of a qnap ts-673 as thought I'd have plenty of room to expand and useing at least 3 drives as need to rip 250+ or so blu rays.... Will be useing plex but also want to use the vero 4k box too..... I'm new to this game so lots to learn....
I'm thinking of useing a raid 5, don't want to lose all that data after ripping 250+discs.

Steveocee · 7 Aug 2019 at 09:34

kvnwds43 said:
I'm thinking of useing a raid 5, don't want to lose all that data after ripping 250+discs.

That's what a backup is for. RAID is just redundancy so you have some wriggle room for if a disk goes down, please never think of it as a secure means.

If you are building a server to hold your data on (RAID5) you still need a backup of that data.

skyripper · 7 Aug 2019 at 09:54

Why do people always buy the biggest drives they can and then decide to RAID5 them?
Get smaller drives and 0+1 them.
Better read and write performance, better rebuild time in the event of a disk failure and less chance of critical failure due to read error during a rebuild.

kvnwds43 · 7 Aug 2019 at 12:44

skyripper said:
Why do people always buy the biggest drives they can and then decide to RAID5 them?
Get smaller drives and 0+1 them.
Better read and write performance, better rebuild time in the event of a disk failure and less chance of critical failure due to read error during a rebuild.

That seems a good idea thanks for that i reckon I've got approx 7tb of movies so i could do with double that to allow for expansion, so if i had say 2x7tb in a raid 0 then suppose I'd need the same again in another raid0 for backup.?

Steveocee · 7 Aug 2019 at 12:58

kvnwds43 said:
That seems a good idea thanks for that i reckon I've got approx 7tb of movies so i could do with double that to allow for expansion, so if i had say 2x7tb in a raid 0 then suppose I'd need the same again in another raid0 for backup.?

The RAID obsession is killing me. Why not a 14TB disk to store your data on and another 14TB disk to back up to? Half the components, half the power usage, half the heat, half the risk of a component dying.